French literature summaries - 2021

Short summary - The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

At the age of six, the boy read about how a boa constrictor swallows its prey, and drew a snake that swallowed an elephant. It was a drawing of a boa constrictor on the outside, but the adults claimed it was a hat. Adults always need to explain everything, so the boy made another drawing - a boa constrictor from the inside. Then the adults advised the boy to give up this nonsense - according to them, he should have done more geography, history, arithmetic and spelling. So the boy abandoned his brilliant career as an artist. He had to choose another profession: he grew up and became a pilot, but he still showed his first drawing to those adults who seemed to him smarter and more intelligent than the others - and everyone answered that it was a hat. It was impossible to talk to them heart to heart - about boas, jungles and stars. And the pilot lived alone until he met the Little Prince.

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It happened in the Sahara. Something broke in the plane's engine: the pilot had to fix it or die, because there was only water left for a week. At dawn, the pilot was awakened by a thin voice - a tiny baby with golden hair, who, no one knows how, got into the desert, asked to draw a lamb for him. The astonished pilot did not dare to refuse, especially since his new friend was the only one who could see in the first drawing a boa constrictor who swallowed an elephant. Gradually it became clear that the Little Prince flew in from a planet called asteroid B-612 - of course, the number is only needed for boring adults who adore numbers.

The entire planet was the size of a house, and the Little Prince had to take care of it: every day he cleaned three volcanoes - two active and one extinct, as well as weed out sprouts of baobabs. The pilot did not immediately understand what danger the baobabs were, but then he guessed and, in order to warn all the children, drew a planet where a bummer lived who did not weed out three bushes in time. But the little prince always put his planet in order. But his life was sad and lonely, so he loved to watch the sunset - especially when he was sad. He did this several times a day, just moving his chair to follow the sun. Everything changed when a wonderful flower appeared on his planet: it was a beauty with thorns - proud, touchy and simple-minded. The little prince fell in love with her, but she seemed to him capricious, cruel and arrogant - he was too young then and did not understand how this flower illuminated his life. And so the little prince cleared his volcanoes for the last time, pulled out the sprouts of the baobabs, and then said goodbye to his flower, which only at the moment of parting confessed that he loved him.

He went wandering and visited six neighboring asteroids. On the first there lived a king: he wanted so much to have subjects that he offered the Little Prince to become a minister, and the little one thought that adults were a very strange people. On the second planet lived an ambitious person, on the third - a drunkard, on the fourth - a business man, and on the fifth - a lamplighter. All the adults seemed to the Little Prince extremely strange, and only the Lamplighter liked him: this man remained faithful to the agreement to light in the evenings and extinguish the lanterns in the morning, although his planet had decreased so much that day and night changed every minute. Don't be so small here. The little prince would have stayed with the Lamplighter, because he really wanted to make friends with someone - besides, on this planet one could admire the sunset fourteen hundred and forty times a day!

A geographer lived on the sixth planet. And since he was a geographer, he was supposed to ask travelers about the countries where they came from in order to record their stories in books. The little prince wanted to talk about his flower, but the geographer explained that only mountains and oceans are recorded in books, because they are eternal and unchanging, and flowers do not last long. Only then the little prince realized that his beauty would soon disappear, and he left her alone, without protection and help! But the offense had not yet passed, and the little prince went on, but he thought only about his abandoned flower.

The seventh was Earth - a very difficult planet! Suffice it to say that it has one hundred and eleven kings, seven thousand geographers, nine hundred thousand businessmen, seven and a half million drunkards, three hundred and eleven million ambitious - a total of about two billion adults. But the Little Prince made friends only with the snake, the Fox and the pilot. The snake promised to help him when he bitterly regrets his planet. And the Fox taught him to be friends. Everyone can tame someone and become his friend, but you always need to be responsible for those whom you have tamed. And the Fox also said that only the heart is vigilant - you cannot see the most important thing with your eyes. Then the little prince decided to return to his rose, because he was responsible for it. He went into the desert - to the very place where he fell. So they met the pilot. The pilot drew him a lamb in a box and even a muzzle for a lamb, although he used to think that he could only draw boas - outside and inside. The little prince was happy, but the pilot felt sad - he realized that he was also tamed. Then the little prince found a yellow snake, whose bite kills in half a minute: she helped him, as promised. The snake can return anyone to where he came from - it returns people to the earth, and returned the Little Prince to the stars. The kid said to the pilot that it would only look like death, so there is no need to be sad - let the pilot remember him, looking at the night sky. And when the little prince laughs, it will seem to the pilot that all the stars are laughing, like five hundred million bells.

The pilot repaired his plane, and his comrades were delighted with his return. Six years have passed since that time: little by little he consoled himself and loved to look at the stars. But he is always overcome by excitement: he forgot to draw a strap for the muzzle, and the lamb could eat the rose. Then it seems to him that all the bells are crying. After all, if the rose is no longer in the world, everything will be different, but no adult will ever understand how important it is.